Concrete Angel
by Mrs.EdwardElric610
Summary: Martina McBride's Concrete Angel. Alfred Jones is standing up against child abuse, and he won't stop until no more children are being hurt. He stands on the sidewalk in the rain, telling the story of a little girl he used to know. Fem!Canada


Alfred Jones, a vivacious young college student with blue eyes, blond hair, and a fire in his spirit, was standing on the street corner near a bus stop. But he wasn't waiting for the bus. He was holding a sign that was duct taped to a long piece of wood. On the sign was a blaring red-paint message:

STOP CHILD ABUSE NOW!

There had been others with him, but they had left a while ago, somewhere around the six hour mark. But Alfred wasn't leaving until it was too dark to see. Not even as the rain began to pour, spattering his rimless glasses and drenching his hair. He had been so sure that people would be supportive of his cause, but they walked right by without so much as looking at him. Alfred wasn't asking for much, just a nod, maybe a smile. But at that point he wasn't even getting eye contact.

"Why don't you just go home, sonny? You'll get sick out here in the rain." An elderly woman in a plastic rain bonnet said to him. It appeared that she was one of the half-dozen people waiting there for the bus. The rest of the small crowd looked at Al out of the corners of their eyes, waiting for his reply.

"Because," Alfred rose his voice slightly so that he could be heard by everyone there, "I take it on myself, _personally_, to stop child abuse." 

"Why not come back later? When it's dry and warm?" the woman replied. But Al shook his head tightly.

"I can't wait a single second. Not until there are no more children being abused." Alfred's eyes burned with passion. "I have to do this."

"Why you?" this was a business woman in a suit, "Why not send your friends out here while you warm up for a while?"

Alfred looked at her, "Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time, I lived next door to a little girl. Her name was Madeline Williams-Bonnefoy..." 

She had bright violet eyes and short blond hair, and glasses... and every day she wore the same dress. They were in the same first grade class. She always had odd things for lunch, like she just woke up and threw something in a bag and left the house. Sometimes Al could see little bruises peeking out from under the lace cuff of her dress, bruises that looked like hand prints.

At school, the teacher sometimes looked at Maddie funny. She probably suspected, but didn't ask. You couldn't always see the pain behind the brave face that the little girl put up every day. Nobody knew that she was bearing the weight of a storm all on her own.

"And then... I heard crying in the middle of the night. Screaming. I know the other neighbors could hear her but they just ignored her." Al squinted into the cloudy sky, feeling a half a dozen pairs of eyes on him. He was lost in his memories.

In the morning, though, it was too late. It had already happened. Six year old Alfred stood with his hands gripping the yellow Caution tape that the cops had strung in front of Maddie's house. The police lights lit his solemn face blue and red, and the ambulance siren filled the air, drowning out the muted conversations of the neighbors that had come out to poke their noses into the latest scandal on the street. A stretcher with a small figure on it was brought out of the house, but not in any hurry. A sheet was pulled up over the face of the figure, but a few locks of golden hair were visible.

Alfred went to the funeral, and for once he hardly noticed the suit that his father had wrestled him into, with shouts and curses that made no sense with his dad's strong British accent. He was too busy staring at the small statue standing beneath the shade of a sprawling maple tree: an angel girl with an upturned face. A name was written on the polished rock... a broken heart that the world forgot. Madeline Williams-Bonnefoy.

"Mr. Bonnefoy- Madeline's dad- had beaten her to death that night. God knows why. All I know is that a little girl was killed, when her death could have been prevented if someone had just taken a moment to _think!_ To wonder where her bruises came from, to wonder why she wore the same dress every day, why she cried at recess almost every day. If they would have stepped outside their comfort zone. She'd still be alive." Alfred's hands were white knuckled on his sign, and he was fighting the angry tears that threatened his eyes. Through his soaking wet white t-shirt, dark words were barely visible on his back, a tattoo he had gotten to always remind himself why he stood out in the rain with his sign. A small section of verse he had written in his own hand, so that Maddie's memory would always be with him, to remind him what he was fighting for.

_Through the wind and the rain _

_she stands hard as a stone,_

_in a world that she can't rise above._

_But her dreams give her wings,_

_and she flies to a place where she's loved. _

_Concrete angel. _


End file.
